undermind comments on LW Women- Minimizing the Inferential Distance - Less Wrong

58 [deleted] 25 November 2012 11:33PM

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Comment author: undermind 27 November 2012 01:32:01AM 2 points [-]

Hmm. My attempt at answering this: The "incidental decisions" is about such actions as choosing male candidates over female candidates with identical qualifications, ignoring women`s contributions at meetings and then agreeing strongly when a man later says the exact same thing, and so on. As for "excluding the threat", maybe it refers to perceptions of women as being less skilled, rather than having the cognitive dissonance involved in admitting you're picking the man because he is male.

Comment author: MugaSofer 27 November 2012 01:55:16AM 0 points [-]

So subconscious bias, then? "Excluding the threat" makes it sound deliberate and disingenuous.

Comment author: undermind 27 November 2012 02:17:15AM 1 point [-]

In my interpretation, yes, subconscious bias, and avoiding the issue or finding various non-answers when it is raised to conscious attention.

Comment author: MugaSofer 27 November 2012 02:29:58AM 0 points [-]

I habitually define racism and sexism to exclude such bias, which seems to have led me astray in this case